UK Chancellor of Exchequer out of options, historian says

THE Chancellor is like Mr Micawber, hoping that ‘something will come up’ to boost his fortunes, a leading economic historian said last night.

Speaking ahead of delivering the annual Julian Hodge Institute for Macroeconomics lecture Professor Nicholas Crafts warned that the George Osborne lacked many of the levers available to his predecessors in previous downturns.

The Warwick University academic said that history had shown that where you were cutting government expenditure, as the Chancellor is currently doing, you need to have a parallel policy that will stimulate growth.

"The message from previous recessions is that you do need policy to help you recover," he said....